The second one glanced back over his shoulder at whatever the darkness hid, and then clicked his tongue in a shrug. "She is Wind Clan domana." He bowed lowly to her. "Do you wish to continue this way, domi?"
Now they had her curious.
"Yes, please," Tinker said.
The first bowed too, and backed up to clear the path. "Forgiveness, ze domi."
"Forgiveness." She started forward slowly, in case they changed their minds. I'm harmless. I'm harmless.
"So that is her?" the second murmured lowly. "They said she was small, but I did not expect her to be that tiny."
"It certainly puts her fight with the oni warriors in new light."
"The courage of dragons, they say."
She blushed hotly, embarrassed but pleased by their words. After her dealings with Sparrow, she was afraid that everyone except Pony disliked her. Perhaps it was just Sparrow. Certainly they seemed to think that she had a right to the mysterious stones.
She came to an open plaza and the guards and Sparrow were forgotten.
Monoliths stood in a massive circle, like silent giants. Elf shines drifted through the dark shadows cast by the stones. The air roiled with magic; it flushed her fever hot and made her feel so light she worried about drifting away. She stepped forward, and something thrummed underfoot, making her jerk backwards.
A channel for a ley line had been chiseled into the paving stone, slashing across her path. As she looked at it, her eyes slowly registered the nearly invisible purple of potential magic. Outside of the buildup on her electromagnet, she'd never seen magic in enough quantity to be visible. She backed up another step and considered what she was wearing. Suddenly the wood and leather fasteners on her clothes made sense. What about her boots? Sparrow had made some remark about them not being appropriate for the palace. She backed up a little more and pulled off her boots. The paving stones were polished smooth and toasty warm under her stocking feet.
Her boots in hand, she stepped over the channel and went out into the plaza for a closer look. Attracted by her movement, elf shines drifted to her in order to light the way. Without scale, she had mistaken the size of the monoliths, thinking they were only nine or ten feet tall. As she hiked across the wide flat plaza, they loomed taller and taller as she neared them, until they towered nearly twenty feet above her. The monoliths were made of polished granite, with spells permanently inlaid in their surfaces. She peered at the elaborate arcane design as the shines floated around her, reflected in the polished stone.
The spells inscribed into the rock were unlike anything she had worked with before, so much so she couldn't even guess their function. She found a jumper point sunk deep into the stone and realized that the monoliths were layers of inlaid slabs, in essence huge macro chips. They could trigger complex spells fueled by the massive amount of magic represented by the ley line—but to do what? And why hadn't Sparrow wanted her to know about them?
Someone was walking toward her, footsteps loud on stone. She turned to find Windwolf coming across the plaza, still in the matching bronze. As usual, all her emotions went tumbling so she wasn't sure what she really felt. Relief. Desire. Anger.
"Tink."
And she remembered him kissing her neck, whispering, "Trust me, my little savage Tink."
With a snarl, she flung her boots at his head, and immediately regretted it. What if she actually hit him in the face? She didn't want to hurt him—well, yes, she did—but not that bad.
Windwolf flinched his head aside so her boots sailed past him, not even ruffling his hair. "Is something wrong?"
"Yes! Look at me!"
"You look beautiful."
"Why did you do this to me?"
"I did not want you to die. You did not want to die."
"I thought you meant I was sick! I thought you were going to heal me of something." She pointed to one of her now-pointed ears. "You didn't tell me that you were going to make me an elf!"
"I thought you understood." He slipped his hand through her hair to run his fingertips over her ear point. "At least as far as you could."
His touch sent electric sparks all through her body. She wanted him, wanted him so badly it terrified her. She pulled away, trembling with more than desire. "Play fair. I'm not stupid, you know; I would have understood."
"It will take you a human's lifetime, and perhaps more, to understand what it is to be an elf. Can a wildflower tucked in the roots of an ironwood understand what it is like to tower over everything, face to the bare sky? Can the wildflower understand facing winter instead of going dormant underground? Can it imagine surviving lightning strikes and forest fires?"
She punched him in the shoulder, hard enough to knock him back. "Oh, don't go metaphysical on me. 'Do you want to be an elf? That's all you had to ask so that I knew what decision I was really making. I feel like you tricked me. I feel like you betrayed my trust!"
"I am sorry that you feel like I tricked you," he said in a low, sincere voice. "The timing was important, and I rushed things to meet the window of opportunity. I thought you understood as much as possible and consented fully. I would never betray you."
Much as she didn't want to, she believed him. Without malice or arrogance on his part, it seemed pointless to argue blame. She had, after all, given her consent, stupid as it was in hindsight.
"Can you change me back?"
"Is it so bad that to die a human is better?"
"Not to die human, to live a human."
"Is being an elf so bad?"
"No. Yes. I don't know. I don't like having someone follow me around." She didn't name Pony, feeling like she'd be betraying him. "And I don't like strangers showing up with swords and demanding that I drop everything to come with them. I don't like wearing these stupid clothes, and being looked at as if I'm some rude, ignorant thing. And I hate that saying even this makes me sound whiny."
"Ah."
He stood silent and still as she stalked away to retrieve her footwear. Tinker was too angry to be motionless, too civilized to scream like she desperately wanted to. After throwing her boots at him, she was too shamed to shout without provocation. If he had said something, anything, to let her vent, she would have happily latched on to it. He remained quiet as she pulled her boots back on; if he could wear his boots, she wasn't going to stand around in stocking feet.
"Tinker, I am sorry," he said finally. "I did not want to make you miserable."
"Well, you succeeded in doing just that."
He opened his arms, offering comfort without asking her forgiveness. She glared at him but her anger had run out, and all that remained was lonely hurt. She leaned against him, letting him wrap his arms around her and kiss her temple.
They stood unmoving and silent for several minutes until all the hurt was soothed away and curiosity took over.
"What are these monoliths?"
"They are the Wind Clan Spell Stones," Windwolf said. "It is from these that the Wind Clan domana derive their power."
"What do they do?"
"In the same manner that magic can allow travel through worlds, it can allow power to cross worlds."
"I don't understand."
"One calls for power, and it comes."
She shook her head, still not understanding.
"I will show you."
Windwolf stepped away from her, and held out his right hand, thumb and index finger rigid, middle fingers cocked oddly. "Daaaaaaaaae."
Tinker felt the tremor in the air around Windwolf, like a pulse of a bass amplifier, first against a sense she hadn't been aware of before, and then against her skin. She realized that she had felt the magic triggering. Windwolf's hand apparently was taking the place of a written spell, and his voice starting the resonance that would focus the magic into the pattern set up by the spell. Once triggered, the spell would continue until canceled or all magic was sucked out of the area.